When Kathleen Wynne first announced plans to hike Ontario’s minimum wage to $15-an-hour, she argued the increase was necessary to create “fair workplaces and better jobs.”

“Millions of workers in Ontario are finding it almost impossible to support their families on a minimum wage that just doesn’t go far enough,” Wynne said while premier in a May 2017 release.

However, in the post-truth world of 21st century politics, there’s increasingly more political payoff in feeding voters misleading, exaggerated or outright false appeals to emotion than there is in dishing out unpalatable truths.

In Ontario, it was clearly politically profitable ahead of an election campaign for Wynne to champion millions of low-wage workers struggling to make ends meet, and paint Doug Ford –- then her chief rival –- as an enemy of the working poor.

And when Ford eventually proposed to freeze the minimum wage at $14-an-hour and eliminate provincial income tax for minimum wage earners, that gave Wynne her populist bumper sticker.

“Doug Ford says he stands for workers, but opposes Kathleen Wynne’s plan to give them a raise,” she tweeted in May. “Actions speak louder than words, and we’ve acted: we raised the minimum wage to $14 and will raise it again to $15.”

Cue NDP leader Andrea Horwath, who fumed Ford’s tax cut was a “ripoff.” “Nobody who works full time in Ontario should live in poverty, but that’s the reality facing too many people today,” Horwath’s election platform said.

Life has become increasingly unaffordable in Ontario under the Liberals (think rising hydro, car insurance, taxes, deficits, debt, etc.) to the point that many middle-class families, and low-income ones in particular, are struggling.

Broad populist generalizations about “too many” workers living in poverty and “millions” struggling to support families clearly appeal to voter emotions.

But they fundamentally fail to reflect either reality or address the actual problems of the working poor, suggests a new Fraser Institute report by Charles Lammam and Hugh MacIntyre.

A rally in support of Tim Hortons workers outside a Toronto location on Jan. 10, 2018. (Jack Boland/Toronto Sun file)

Remember the protests outside of Tim Hortons? The war of words between Wynne and Timmy owners?

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath on the campaign trail. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

The reality, economists generally agree, is that higher minimum wages significantly reduce “job opportunities for workers, particularly young and inexperienced workers,” the Fraser report argues, and references 20 recent academic studies supporting that view, including one from the former government’s own advisory panel on minimum wages.

Another reality is “stepping-stone” jobs that lead to experience, employment and careers disappear. Employers hire and invest less. That profoundly hurts young people looking to get their careers started, and robs opportunity from low-income workers and families.

What does help low-income families, Fraser suggests, are subsidies and cash transfers. Employers don’t care if employees pay less tax and get subsidies. They don’t react by cutting jobs, or hours or investment.

The Fraser report concludes hiking minimum wages in Ontario did little to help those in poverty. That reflects the difference between wanting to help people, and actually helping people.

The Liberals planned to hire 175 inspectors to crack down on small businesses to police their minimum wage hike.

Ford, as premier, plans to eliminate provincial income taxes for minimum wage workers.

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